As the holiday season quickly approaches companies are eagerly shoving their newest seasonal line up in our faces through advertising, product showcases and junk mail. Sadly, your wallet isn't the only thing being taken advantage of, many artist's livelihoods are also being ravaged. This is not the first, and definitely won't be the last, time a hard working artist's work has been stolen and placed onto a chintzy product to be mass produced for the frenzied consumer crowds.

Keep in mind that the life of the artist (at least for 99% of us) is not glamorous. We fight, tooth and nail to get people to even LOOK at our work, let alone purchase it. Because hand crafted items cost a little bit more (for obvious reasons) than mass produced items, the artist often gets left in the dust. The truth is, the majority of the public is "quantity" over "quality" oriented these days. A push back against this is starting to form (just look at the rise of interests in organic), but there is still an overflow of mass produced products and business machos that won't allow that pushback to ever fully take hold.

I must say that the recent uproar over Lisa Congdon's work has gotten me pretty excited, and I hope that it leads to something bigger. If that doesn't make you angry enough, maybe this will.

I hope that hard working artists, such as myself and my amazing husband Kyle Turner, start to get a little more respect for the work we do and the care, quality, and craft that we put into it all. I must say, the fact that from reading the above article last night, to seeing this article by Yahoo News this morning, does make it seem a little more hopeful.

In proper timing, this little meme (is that what these are called?) was posted by my sister-in-law and it fits perfectly as an ending to my little rant.